Woah, Really?

Is this mount depicting what I think it does?

Bill just posted Michelle Stocker's new paper, taken from her thesis, on Leptosuchus and related phytosaurs. Previously, I blogged on phytosaur evolution; spcifically how different evolutionary grades of phytosaur show up in the fossil record in exactly the stratigraphic sequence expected from evolution. The new taxon new taxon that Michelle names, Pravusuchus, fits very nicely into that picture. It is an intermediate between Leptosuchus-like phytosaurs and Pseudopalatus. It also occur stratigraphically at just below the lowest occurences of Pseudopalatus, and as high as the highest-known Leptosuchus-like specimens. Bill and I document this in our forthcoming paper on park biostratigraphy, although we got the final revisions back a little too soon to use the name Pravusuchus, which hadn't been published yet.